View full sizeMotoya Nakamura/The Oregonian.Dr. LeRoy Haynes, center, vice president of the Albina Ministerial Alliance, leads prayer during a protest in front of the City Hall in Portland, Ore., Wednesday, Feb. 17, 2010, regarding Aaron Campbell's death. Officer Ron Frashour shot Campbell on Jan. 29 in the back with a rifle after police were called to his apartment building by the family of his girlfriend who was worried that Campbell was threatening suicide and was distraught over the death that day of his younger brother from heart disease.
A rally by critics of the Portland Police Bureau turned into an angry confrontation with Mayor Sam Adams on Wednesday afternoon.

Hundreds of people marched from the Justice Center to City Hall and then up to the mayor's office, where they met with Adams at the front door.

The unusual confrontation came one day after the Rev. Jesse Jackson visited Portland and ratcheted up the pressure on the city by calling a police officer's fatal shooting of an unarmed African American man last month "an execution."

Marchers massed in the hallway in front of the mayor's office and on the steps nearby, demanding action in the aftermath of the Jan. 29 shooting death of Aaron Campbell.

"Here we are asking you to work with us," yelled Sanford Webb of Southwest Portland. "What the hell are you doing?"

"I'm here with you," Adams responded. But the protesters shouted back, calling for the ouster of Police Chief Rosie Sizer and questioning Adams' commitment to make changes.

"Where's your spine?" one protester shouted. Another man made an obscene gesture at the mayor.

"I want to see if the mayor's for real," Webb said later, "or if he's a phony like a lot of us suspect he is."

Wednesday's confrontation lasted about 90 minutes and appeared as if it might careen out of control in front of Adams' office.

The officer who shot Campbell, Ronald Frashour, returned to work Wednesday morning in East Precinct as part of a neighborhood response team.

The Rev. LeRoy Haynes, vice president of the Albina Ministerial Alliance, said the city could have placed Frashour on leave until an internal police investigation into the shooting is complete. Haynes led Wednesday's rally and delivered a letter to the mayor's office.

In the letter, the ministerial alliance asked for a public inquiry into Campbell's death and a special prosecutor to handle cases in which excessive or lethal force is used.

View full sizeMotoya Nakamura/The OregonianDemonstrators gather outside City Hall in downtown Portland. Minutes later, the group moved inside City Hall and began to demand to meet with Mayor Sam Adams.The alliance also asked for a review of the city's use-of-force policies, better training and a stronger Citizen Review Committee. The ministers said Campbell's death was "preventable and unnecessary."

"We feel like we have not gotten the answers we want," Haynes said after the rally. "We don't want the officer to be engaged with the public."

View full sizeSteve Beaven/The OregonianProtesters hold signs outside the Justice Center in downtown Portland. A short time later, the group moved to City Hall, where members demanded a meeting with Mayor Sam Adams.But Steve Myers, Frashour's attorney, said any call for his client to be suspended is unwarranted.

"I think that's profoundly premature," Myers said. "I doubt whether anybody who is making any of those comments has reviewed the investigative file."

Myers asked that the public not pass judgment until all the information is gathered.

After Wednesday's rally, Adams met with Webb and, separately, with the family of Aaron Campbell. Their biggest concern, he said, is Frashour's return to duty. He relayed their concerns to Sizer and Police Commissioner Dan Saltzman but declined to say if he thought Frashour should remain on duty.

Saltzman said he's going to wait until he reads the grand jury transcripts from the Campbell shooting before making any further decisions regarding Frashour's status. The transcripts are expected to be released today.

"Things can change," Saltzman said. "Things are fluid."

Campbell was suicidal and unarmed when he was shot in the back. Frashour later said he thought Campbell was reaching toward his waistband for a weapon.

Witnesses, however, said Campbell had been walking backward toward police with his hands locked behind his head moments before the fatal shot.

A Multnomah County grand jury cleared Frashour of criminal wrongdoing in the shooting but sent a letter to the district attorney's office criticizing how police handled the incident.

View full sizeMotoya Nakamura/The OregonianPortland Mayor Sam Adams says goodbye to Sanford Webb, Bishop A.A. Wells and Pastor Lynne Lopez after they met with the mayor. This meeting followed a more tense confrontation earlier when hundreds chanted "fire him" outside Adams's office. Motoya Nakamura/The Oregonian Hours after the rally on his doorstep, Adams said he felt it was important for him, as mayor, to come out of his office and meet with the protesters.

"Their passion and their anger is understandable," he said.

But the rally and the meeting with the mayor did not satisfy LaShell Douglass, Campbell's sister. She fears that Frashour ultimately will be able to return to duty as a patrol officer.

"Everybody needs to be scared just like me," Douglass said. "What he did was not OK."